Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Although it's still looking like summer there is a certain nip in the air, a familiar breeze that whispers of autumn. This is a picture of a corner of my back porch where I plunked myself down and wiled away many a delightful hour reading. I can recommend these books I've read this summer:Heartbreak Cafe and The Blue Bottle Club by Penelope Stokes....she has the same authors voice as Fanny Flag so if you're a Fanny Flag fan then you'd like her. Something Blue by Emily Giffin is a chick lit book....easy read, pretty good story. Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani.....great story about an Italian family and the main character Valentina is an apprentice working with her grandmother making custom wedding shoes. She is about to lose the family company that has been in business since 1903 when she takes trip to Italy and.........well I don't want to tell you the whole story!Water, Stone, Heartby Will North......oh how I loved this book. It's about an American professor who escapes to Cornwall, England to learn to build fieldstone hedges and to find out what he really wants out of life. This was my favorite of these 5. I'll post more books I've read and enjoyed this summer later. Although I adore summer, I'm getting into the fall mood as you can't beat the beauty of fall in Western Pennsylvania. Here are a few new pieces I've been working on......

Toodee found the witch shoe I made the other day and decided to make it his home for awhile. He begged me to make smaller ones for him but I told him "no" as he would most likely end up eating them.

This shoe was made from black cardstock and decorative pumpkin paper. You can make your own witch shoe with the template found here. I embellished mine with a piece of ribbon and a white button. Here are a few tips for putting it together: use a few tiny clothes pins to keep it together while it's drying and use a scoring blade to score the lines on the template as it makes it easier to get precise folds. I use the cutter bee bug score blade, it works great.

Here is a vintage wooden domino I collaged and turned into a pendant. I'm obsessed with putting pointed hats on birds...........don't worry it's just a stage I'm going through and if I could get away with it, I too would probably walk around with a big pointy hat on!

You know most questions can be answered with one or two words. I think people talk way too much and this is coming from a speech-language pathologist! I call these pins my "Wise Old Owl" series. I cut them out of 1/4 inch Baltic birch with a band saw, collaged them, painted the eyes, embellished with black pigma marker, sealed with Diamond Glaze and lastly glued the pin to the back. They were very time consuming and that's why I only made 3!

Here are the questions they answer...........

What is something you should you never break besides a heart?What should people do more?

What should you do upon a star?

I displayed them in this frame with a tree collage and moon. Maybe I'll make some more but I'll have to get real ambitious for that to happen. Lastly, a giant flat back marble was turned into a pendant. My brother Jimmy and I always carved a pumpkin together and he would aways make me reach in a scoop out the slimy, wet, cold pumpkin guts! Yuck!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Good morning everyone! I picked the winner for the bird pendant but a curious thing happened while I was using the random generator at the random.org website to pick the winner..... I hit the button twice so being a only fair, I picked two winners. Those winners are: Lissie and Cathie H. Congrats ladies! Please contact me with your addresses and I'll get them mailed out to you.Smiles-Melissa

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

I loved making these little collage pendants. I've always liked birds and remember as a kid looking through my gram's bird book and sitting for hours drawing birds from the book (she was a birder). A few months ago I found the "Birds of North America" book at Borders and picked it up for a few bucks. I tucked it away and pulled it out the other day....was leafing through it and inspriation struck! Ta-da! Birdie Collage Pendants! They are backed on a thin piece of wood and the back is finished off as well. They measure a little over 1 inch wide and 2 inches tall. They are available at Honey Girl Studio Jewelry.

Something guilded...... my new jewelry display frame. I was so psyched when I got it for $6 at Hobby Lobby, it was 90% off!!! It went to the Time and Again Shop today full of new goodies. Hope you all had a great Saturday and had interesting "some things" throughout your day!

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Well, here is my completed project from the other day.....a nest necklace. To be exact, a crow's nest. You know how those crows are, they like to collect shiny things and put them in their nest. This nest has 3 little freshwater pearls for eggs, a rhinestone button, an antique brass button, white shell button and a tiny metal key and the back has been finished off with a hand stitched piece of felt. Hanging from the bottom of it is a little metal frame which says "bird". It measures about 19 inches long. The necklace has been created from aqua tiger eye glass beads, freshwater pearls, tiny wooden beads and white vintage shell buttons. It's available at:Honey Girl Studio Jewelry.